John L. Hirsch
Senior Adviser
hirsch@ipinst.org
John L. Hirsch is Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Adjunct Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College and Director of its United Nations Program. From 1998-2002 Ambassador Hirsch served as Vice President of IPI. Later, he became Senior Fellow from 2002-2005, serving as Acting Director of the Africa Program as well as leading its program on The United Nations and International Terrorism in 2002-2003. He is currently a senior adviser to IPI President Terje Rød-Larsen.
Before joining IPI, Ambassador Hirsch served as United States Ambassador to the Republic of Sierra Leone from 1995-98, following extensive Foreign Service experience in Africa, including assignments in Somalia in 1984-86, and subsequently as Political Adviser to the Commander of UNITAF, General Robert Johnston, and as Deputy to President Bush’s Special Envoy, Ambassador Robert Oakley in 1992-93. Ambassador Hirsch served as Consul General in Johannesburg, South Africa from 1990-93, the years of transition from apartheid to non-racial multiparty democracy. His earlier assignments in Israel at the start of the Middle East peace process in the mid-seventies and, subsequently, at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations and in Pakistan have dealt with major issues of multilateral diplomacy and United Nations peacekeeping.
Ambassador Hirsch was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in 1993-94 and Diplomat-in-Residence at Medgar Evers College, The City University of New York in 1994-95. He was Director of the International Fellows Program at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs for the 2000-01 academic year.
Ambassador Hirsch received his B.A. in American Studies from Columbia University in 1957 and his Ph.D. in European History from the University of Wisconsin in 1965. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Turin, Italy in 1962-1963, where he wrote a dissertation on the Italian Resistance Movement and its impact on postwar Italian political developments.
His publications include Sierra Leone: Diamonds and the Struggle for Democracy (Lynne Rienner Publishers, January 2001) and Somalia and Operation Restore Hope: Reflections on Peacemaking and Peacekeeping, co-authored with Ambassador Robert B. Oakley (U.S. Institute of Peace, March 1995).